Odessa

They say, if you haven't been to Odessa, you haven't been to Ukraine. Odessa is a port city in the Odessky Bay of the Black Sea. This is the third largest city of Ukraine, after Kyiv and Kharkov, and the main industrial, cultural, transport, research, and resort center of the Northern part of the Black Sea basin. In the multinational aspect, Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish people prevail in the city.

"The Little Paris": that is the name attached to this beautiful city of Odessa by those, who have already visited it.

Odessa is an amazing city that combines the incongruous. This resort city has a light-minded, almost anecdotic reputation, 1.6 mln citizens of which are now living in the Odessa-like mixture of the Eastern charm and Southern lifestyle. It is so delightful to make a walk around the city on a hot Summer day in the shadow of acacias, and in the noise of unceasingly creaking old trams on the streets of the city.

The inhabitants of Odessa are proud of their unique architectural and cultural heritage. The city includes a university (founded in 1865), the theater of opera and ballet (1809), historical museum (1825), the city library (1830), an observatory (1871), a picture-gallery (1898), and other educational establishments, theaters, and museums.

It is the birthplace of Anna Akhmatova and Michael Zhvanetsky. Such renown people, as the poet Alexandre Pushkin, biochemist Ilya Mechnikov, and singer Leonid Utesov lived here in different times. The several generations of bright humorists, born and grown up in Odessa during the last century, have made the city famous as the capital of Russian-speaking humor. The houses in the old part of the city are built in different styles, from the Renaissance to Art Nouveau.

The famous Potemkin staircase, presented by duke Vorontsov to his beloved Elisabeth, Deribasovskaya street, the quay are sure to steal your heart. The beautiful city parks, the port, the privoz and lots of other things: all of this you will be able to see when visiting this nice city.